How about wholesale online music? Imagine Costco but online and with music. This would be great for people who buy a lot of music and wouldn't be too bad for people who don't buy as much. All of iTunes' 99 cent fee doesn't go to Apple, part of it is royalties. So, if you paid a monthly or yearly fee so the company makes money, you could then buy music for only the cost of royalties. Just a thought, what do you think?

iTunes was just an example. The same goes for any similar service.
-- supercarrot900, Aug 04 2005

I think you'd run into the same problem with any "wholesale" or super cut-rate-to-the-public merchandising, namely, the producers of the product wouldn't allow one entity to so undercut the retail value of their product as to knock others out of business, eventually limiting the number of available outlets for their product.

It's certainly possible to do as you've suggested, but the copyright owners probably wouldn’t go for it. The market forces that effect prices of other products don't really hold here. A vcr manufacture that can make a vcr for cheaper will sell it at retail for cheaper and make it up in volume. No artist wants to be the first to say: "Hey everybody! My songs are half the price of my competition's!" Since the customer's perception of art is the one factor that determines it's success or failure in the market place, starting off by telling everybody yours isn't worth as much as everybody else's isn't going to do much for your image.
-- doctorremulac3, Aug 05 2005



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